


Enjoy the silence

by anniehow



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Post-Episode: s12e04 American Nightmare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 17:25:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8498794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anniehow/pseuds/anniehow
Summary: A little tale of friendship and brotherly bonding.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Depeche Mode's song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGSKrC7dGcY). 
> 
> I first published this on [my tumblr](anniehowsback.tumblr.com) as a S12e03 tag, but to my utter delight I realized it fit even better with the following episode just by adding a couple of lines and here we are :-)

~~Enjoy~~ the silence

Dean is already sitting at the kitchen table when Sam makes his way back from his morning jog. It’s uncharacteristically early for Dean to be up and about, considering they don’t have a case, and when Sam looks on the stove... yep, he’d smelled right: Dean’s made bacon and eggs, _again_ , and a generous portion is waiting, still warm, in the pan.

A cup of coffee, sitting untouched on the table, is steaming. Dean raises his eyebrows and gives half a nod at Sam’s greeting, still staring off in the middle distance with an unhappy frown. He’s fully dressed. In fact...

“Dude, did you sleep at all last night?”

A grimace and a shake of the head, resigned.

Sam knows the feeling. He was going to go for something light today, just some juice and a bagel, but he helps himself to a generous amount of breakfast and fresh coffee, and sits across his brother. “Nightmares?”

“Yeah... no, not really,” Dean mutters, finally looking at Sam and making an effort to look awake and alert. “Just. Thinking.”

Sam decides to be baited, and waits it out. He knows that if he asks for more it’ll probably stop Dean in his tracks, just as much as introducing a new topic would. So he chews on his greasy fat and tries his best to look receptive.

“Have you ever,” Dean starts, only to trail off when they lock eyes. Sam raises his eyebrows but Dean just drops his gaze, frowning.

“You know, I-“ he starts again, but this time he stops even more abruptly, holding his breath for a long moment. He raps his knuckles on the table a couple of times. “Sam,”

“Dean...” he answers reflexively, and sees his brother blinking.

“You’re my brother, and-“ a nervous swallow, finally they lock eyes again, “but, you gotta change your deodorant, man. Those hippy crystals don’t do jack shit when you’re running. You stink to... well, you stink. Ok, good talk. Finish that.” He slams his palm on the table, gets up, and gestures to the pan behind his back before making a hasty retreat towards the bedrooms.

Sam hasn’t even brought the fork up to his mouth when he hears a door slam. If he knows his brother, there’s a good chance his b.o. wasn’t what kept him up at night. Sam takes a considering sniff. It’s not that bad, is it? Surely Dean was going to say something else.

Right?

* * *

 

Ok, but what?

As always, there’s a laundry list of stuff that’s wrong with them, and we’re just talking the backlog. Hell? Guilt? Torture?

Sam kinda hopes it’s not about mom needing some space, because he can deal with that if all he needs to do is reassure himself, but only just. Of course she’s mourning the baby he’s not anymore. He doesn’t want her to baby him anyway, he wants her to love him for who he is now, and waiting to see if that’ll happen is... well. He doesn’t have the emotional reserves to reassure Dean as well.

As it happens, the next night _he’s_ the one having a nightmare and waking up drenched in sweat, heart nearly jack hammering through his ribs. He manages to panic some more when he can’t see Dean in a bed next to him, so he goes to his brother’s room and wakes him up just to make sure that they’re both alive.

Dean’s only half conscious, but he pats Sam’s shoulder, doesn’t comment on the fact that Sam’s crying and there’s snot everywhere. Sam apologizes for waking him from what seems like a pretty rare bout of deep sleep, but Dean waves off his concerns.

“Wanna watch TV?” Dean mumbles around a yawn.

“No. You go back to sleep. I just needed to- humm. Check.”

Dean grunts, throws himself back on his pillow, and is actually back asleep within moments.

Sam makes his shaky way to the kitchen with the idea of fixing himself something hot to drink, and that’s where Cas finds him. They have a deep discussion about the merits of chamomile vs herbal tea for late nights while the water boils, which settles Sam somewhat. Not that he’s even remotely ready to go back to sleep.

“I always find that watching TV is a comfort to a restless mind,” Cas suggests. “The vagaries of human life are especially riveting. It’s Jenny Jones marathon week, if you’re interested.”

* * *

 

Sam can honestly say that watching trash TV with his erstwhile angel friend is one of the sanest coping methods he’s ever tried. While a parade of overbearing mother-in-laws and overprotective father-in-laws defend their meddling into their adult children’s lives to boos and cheers of the studio audience, Sam manages to smile at other people’s petty problems, and Cas tries out his version of tact.

“I don’t have much insight into parenting, having never experienced it myself, but, hypothetically, a parent can be troubled. And these troubles would not be the fault of their hypothetical children.”

“’Mommy and daddy are getting a divorce, but it’s not your fault’, huh?”

“I’ve seen that episode. It turned out the father was gay and having an affair with the wife’s brother. The child definitely had no bearing on it.”

Sam shakes his head, chuckling despite himself. “I don’t think we’ll need to worry about that scenario.”

“Dean said more or less the same thing.”

“Wait, when?”

“Last night. We had a marathon as well. Five episodes: the divorce one, teenagers having affairs with their teachers, men who can’t say ‘I love you’, women who only live in pink houses, and twins marrying twins. Dean was especially disturbed by the two middle ones, but he didn’t want to talk about it.”

Sam turns his full attention on his friend, muting Jenny just as she’s trying to calm down an upset guest.

“Cas… tell me exactly what Dean did.”

* * *

 

Which is how Sam finds himself googling ‘selective mutism’ at four a.m. and then watching a forty-five minutes TED talk on neuro music therapy for aphasia at the six a.m. mark.

It’s still one of the sanest nights of his life.

* * *

 

He sets his trap carefully, using Castiel as bait. Sam shows him a couple of videos on youtube, and by the time Dean joins them in the war room, he’s explaining the point system for lip sync battles to a very doubtful angel.

“But how can you assign a rating to the performance if you’re not actually singing?”

“The performance is the main point!” Dean interjects immediately. “Otherwise you’re just an idiot mouthing words! You gotta put your art in your moves. It’s even more difficult than karaoke.”

“Difficult for you, maybe,” Sam mutters, just this side of audible.

“I could wipe the floor with your ass, little brother. I’m fan-frigging-tastic at lip syncing.”

“Oh, you’re on. But we get to pick each other’s song.”

“Sammy, Sammy… sometimes you just make it too damn easy,” Dean grins to himself as he commandeers the laptop. A short search later and a tinkly orchestra score starts blasting from the speakers. He gestures to Sam while he sits back to enjoy the show.

Sam frowns at the screen. “I don’t know all the words to this.”

“That’s no excuse. Either shit or get off the pot.”

Right. He’s seen Robert de Niro do this. He can lose graciously, considering his loftier goals.

“I feel pretty… oh so pretty… pity the girls who aren’t meee,” he mouths, tossing his hair and keeping a desperate eye on the closed captioning.

By the end of the song Dean has the biggest shit eating face he’s had in years, and Cas is looking kinda betrayed.

“I thought you said the performance was key. You spent all the time reading the words and touching your hair. How does that rate?”

“Sub-zero, Cas. Whatever he throws my way, I’ve got this locked down. Come on, Sam, hit me with your hippiest crap.”

Sam is really hoping this will be worth it, because goddamn. He furiously taps in the search bar, leveraging Dean with a good dose of bitch-face. If Dean backs down now, it will have been all for nothing.

“No hippy crap, Dean. A good ‘ole classic.”

Dean gets up, holding an empty beer bottle like a microphone. His eyes widen for a second when he sees which song is cued, but he hides it immediately behind bluster. “Easy win, Sammy. I could do this all day.”

And at the beginning he actually puts on a good show, waggling his eyebrows and leaning this way and that as he pretends to croon “you’re just too good to be true… can’t take my eyes off of you…”

But on “you’d be like heaven to touch,” he makes the mistake of looking at Cas and he goes rigid, gaze locking on the middle distance for “I want to hold you so much”. He swallows convulsively on the next couple of lines, and picks back up on “and I thank god I’m alive,” barreling on towards the refrain with renewed determination.

As the trumpets have their solo, Dean nods to himself, so tense Sam worries he’s not even going to be able to unclench his jaw to mouth the words.

Dean closes his eyes, takes a deep breath as if he’s actually about to sing, but when the air locks in his throat he freezes and looks at Sam miserably.

Sam mouths “I win”, which infuriates Dean enough that he continues on “and if it’s quite all right, I need you baby, trust in me when I sayyyy…”

Dean grabs his brother by the shirt and aggressively mouths “OH PRETTY BABY, don’t bring me down I pray,” then turns to Cas, pointing at him for “oh pretty baby, now that I’ve found you, stay,” and finally he looks at the floor, but he manages to shape the words with his lips. “Let me love you, baby, let me hold youuu...”

He goes through the second half of the song, confident again with his show. He locks eyes with Sam as the refrain queues up again and this time Sam can read it on his lips. “I love you…”

Dean drops his eyes again on “baby,” and he goes on addressing the floor for another couple of lines, but he steals a glance at Cas for the second “I love you”, and finishes with a flourish and a slow turn that can’t be rightly called a pirouette.

Cas is baffled.

Sam refuses to either admit defeat or to have another round. He’s accomplished what he set out for, anyway.

* * *

 

Sam swings by the town that evening and comes back with pizza, a pecan pie _and_ strawberry shortcake. The look on Dean’s face is worth having had to stop in three different places just to get them.

“Awesome,” he breathes, looking unsure where to begin. He grins at Sam and takes a breath to talk, but then he seems to change his mind and looks at the food again.

Ok, Sam did _not_ go through the past two days to wind back at square one. “What?”

“Huh, nothing,” Dean replies too quickly. Then he looks at Sam again. “Mom checked in. She… she sends her love.”

“Oh,” Sam exhales, suddenly feeling lighter. “Yes. Well, of course. We’re a big, loving family, aren’t we?” He wants to joke, but it comes out embarrassingly needy.

“Damn straight,” Dean nods.

Sam claps a hand on Dean’s shoulder and tells him, quietly, warmly, “You know I love you, Dean, right?”

Dean takes a sharp breath, startled, but he nods again and, equally quietly, replies with “Yeah, Sammy, ‘course. I… l-love you too.” Just like that, he huffs a laugh and looks relieved. His lips twitch in a smile, and he calls at the top of his lungs “Cas! Sam’s brought pie AND cake! Come and have some!”

**Author's Note:**

> You know when the *crypt scene* happened and Jensen Ackles said Dean would never say the words "I love you", and changed it to "I need you"?
> 
> I agree 100% with him. The sentiment is there, but my little headcanon is that he is _physically unable_ to say it. Trauma, fear, what have you, the only time in TWELVE seasons so far he's said it was in heaven, to the memory of his mom, re-enacting his four-year-old self.
> 
> So, before he can express (and process!) properly his feelings with a certain angel, he needs to overcome this little obstacle of his. I don't think we'll hear him say it to Castiel until he manages to tell Sam (or his mom, or even more likely both). So this is a step in the right direction.


End file.
